To kick off your weekend on a good note, here are a bunch of great reads for a lazy Friday in the office. Because what else are you guys going to do, work?



First here's a piece in Slate by Tom Scocca on Kobe Bryant's place in NBA lore. Scocca argues that Bryant, as talented as he is, works as the ultimate foil:

The Waiting for LeBron premise shortchanges the rivalry that has truly defined an era in the NBA: Kobe Bryant against the Guy Beating Kobe Bryant.

Ask Paul Pierce. Or Manu Ginobili. Or Chauncey Billups. Or ask Leandro Barbosa and Boris Diaw—you don't even have to win an NBA title to enjoy the rewards of beating Kobe Bryant. It is its own reward, the defining rite of passage for a generation of players. This season, it's Carmelo Anthony and the perennially lightweight Denver Nuggets who have the privilege of slugging it out with the Lakers in the Western Conference finals. If he can beat Kobe, Anthony will have established himself as not just a scorer but an all-around star and perhaps an eventual Hall of Famer, the kind of player who can rise to the biggest occasions.

It ties neatly into a previous piece by Sam Anderson, also on Slate, about how much fun it is to hate on Kobe.

A couple of days ago at Yahoo's Ball Don't Lie, Kelly Dwyer took a look at the Spike Lee documentary "Kobe Doin' Work" and concluded that despite Kobe's (and Lee's) efforts to push what Bill Simmons calls propaganda, the uneasy truth seeps out, and it paints a picture of why Kobe is the most compelling player in the league, and why he cuts such a tragic figure:

For those who haven't seen it, Kobe is completely and utterly playing to the 30 cameras that he knows are documenting his every move, recording his every word, in a way that leaves him looking so transparent that it's a wonder he even let this thing get out.

Actually, it isn't a wonder. Kobe has isolated himself so much from anyone who will tell him that things aren't heading in a direction that isn't particularly appropriate, that it's pretty obvious that he doesn't know how poorly he came off.

I'm years removed from being angry about that. At this point, in May of 2009, I'm just sort of sad about that. The guy is so maladjusted, he just has no clue.

And in the sickest way possible, I relate to that.

The man loves the game. That is no act. For as long as he can remember, it's the only thing that he's felt safe with. It's the only thing that hasn't let him down. Coaches and teammates and family and friends and filmmakers may have run afoul of Kobe, but the game is his solace.

And he appreciates and loves and works at the game harder than anyone else in this league. It's not even close. And in his own, maladjusted, way; he wants people to know how much fun he's having, reveling in the game that has given him so much.

Elsewhere, Simmons again has a must-read column on the NBA. This week he takes on the league's shitty officiating, which has been the turd in the punch bowl in the otherwise awesome 2009 NBA Playoffs.

But while the conference finals are going on, other teams in the NBA are preparing for the draft, and there's no more intriguing prospect than 18-year-old Spanish phenom Ricky Rubio. I first heard about the guy after his performance in the European Under-16 tournament a few years ago, where he posted this sick line in the final game: 51 points, 24 rebounds, 12 assists, and 7 steals. He had been playing professional ball in Spain the past few years and last year, when he was 17, opened eyes around the world when he did a decent job against Team USA in the Beijing Olympics.

Because of this, True Hoop's Henry Abbott broke down Rubio's game to try to separate fact from fiction about the Ricky hype.